[spectre] Exhibition, " Plexus", November 11 - December 18 2011

[galerija galzenica]

"Plexus"

Maddalena Mauri, Kata Mijatović, Nika Radić, Davor Sanvincenti

November 11 - December 18, 2011 in Galženica Gallery (Velika 
Gorica/Zagreb) at 7 p.m.


---

In one of his numerous diary notes, James Boswell, English lawyer and 
writer, wrote that he fears his soul will lose its recognizable shape in 
the crisis he has found himself in. In other words, he feared he would 
psychically lose his shape. Today, thanks to philology, psychology, as 
well as psychoanalysis, it is known that Boswell suffered from 
hypochondria and that his fear from losing his shape is just a metaphor 
for what we prefer to call losing control over one’s life. Brian Dillon 
points that the root of Boswell’s problems lies solely n the belief that 
there exists a perfect unity of body and mind, that the body is actually 
a machine, like a hardware being controlled by the mind, i.e. software. 
When Boswell wrote his diary, the term subconsciousness is unknown in 
Western culture, so we can only guess whether the anxiety Boswell felt 
would have been easier if he knew – like we today know, thanks to the 
psychoanalytical theory – that there are areas of human life that are 
impossible to control.

However, the loss of recognizable characteristics of a being, the loss 
of control over a life process, is still a taboo in Western culture. If 
the loss refers to the body, biometric protocols for determining 
identity (face photo, fingerprints, eye cornea, etc.) become unusable. 
Not only is it desirable that the body is beautiful and well shaped, but 
also whole. As such, it can be measured, identified, classified and 
integrated into the community. If the loss refers to the psyche, terms 
such as character, nurture, intelligence or spirituality become 
irrelevant in the intersubjective communication. Building psychiatric 
hospitals at the edge of the city symbolically underlies that. Even in 
cases where it is located within the city itself, its symbolic 
displacement from the currents of everyday life is usually emphasized by 
the architecture (historicist buildings which, for example, imitate 
medieval castles). That which cannot be understood, which cannot be 
communicated with, is excluded from the community.

 From applied arts characteristic of the industrial culture, design has 
evolved into a cultural practice whose influence on contemporary society 
can no longer be measured only with the amount of produced goods 
(commodification), but also with the possibility of governing social 
processes (governmentality). However, despite the development of 
medicine and information science, it seems that the human psyche is 
still strongly opposing governance. If I paraphrased Žižek’s favorite 
rhetorical figure, I could say that today it is possible to imagine 
green energy, life on Mars and the end of the world, but that it is not 
possible to imagine the human psyche without one or more “flaws”. 
Moreover, it seems that the human imagination cannot deny free will to 
any humanoid creature: in one of the most famous examples from the 
history of Western culture, in Ridley Scott’s movie “Blade Runner”, the 
human qualities of the humanoid robot, replicant Roy Batty, are 
confirmed by his unexpected behavior and a taboo – the killing of his 
own father, i.e. his designer.

Although aesthetically formed, in fact commodified, we hope that the 
works in this exhibition point to the occurrences and processes which in 
some way, more than others, resist shaping. Whether it is the silent 
existence of electromagnetic fields of ionosphere, sounds so delicate 
that a technically perfect recorder alone is not enough to register 
then, but can be record only in spaces unsaturated in sound, as in the 
work of Davor Sanvincenti; whether it is the often redundant retelling 
of dreams, maybe one of the most complex translations in our culture – 
subconscious into conscious, nature into culture and back again – which 
often fails our expectations, as in the work of Kata Mijatović – it 
seems that we are always dealing with something unreal, almost eerie. 
The works of Maddalena Mauri and Nika Radić show the same amount of 
distrust if not towards form in the sense of architecture and interior 
design, but surely towards control. In dystopian projections, the 
biggest shock is caused by the fact that the citizens are stalked in 
their apartments and houses. In Orwell’s “1948”, the horror of 
totalitarianism is depicted not so much with the misery of social life, 
more with the intrusion of the state into the intimacy of the 
protagonists, Julie and Winston. Namely, the idea of private space meant 
for living is inseparable from the idea of human freedom, and both can 
be found intertwined in the Universal declaration of human rights (1948).

The alteration between private living spaces with the inner spaces of 
the soul imposes itself like the appropriate representation of this 
exhibition. However, instead of the image of Russian Matrjosckas which 
within themselves hide nothing but another identical Matrjoscka, this 
alteration would be perhaps better presented by the paraphrase of Camus’ 
famous paradox: a man who sits alone in his room must be conceived as 
free. (K. Štefančić)

---

Maddalena Mauri was born in Rome and lives and works in Viterbo. In 2008 
Turan & Thesan editor published 'Maddalena Mauri Drawings And Cards ' 
written by Roberto Savi. She worked for years with trade unions for 
which has produced posters and installations. Her paintings are in the 
permanent collection of the CGL (Confederazione Generale del Lavoro). 
She was a finalist at the Morlotti award, Celest Art Prize and Suzzara 
Award . More on 
http://www.futuraproject.cz/en/karlin-studios/exhibitions/2009/maddalena-mauri-a-strictly-personal-story-68-3082009/

Kata Mijatović was born in 1956 in Branjina, Croatia. She works in the 
field of performance and video art. She was a member of the informal art 
group Močvara (1988–1991) together with Zoran Pavelić, Ružica Zajec, 
Aleksandar Čalović and Zdenka Kner. From 1998 she and Zoran Pavelić were 
among the most active members of the team which formed the Baranja Art 
Colony. More on: http://katamijatovic.mi2.hr/kata.htm

Nika Radić was born in Zagreb in 1968. She studied sculpture at the 
Zagreb Art Academy and art history at the University of Vienna. She made 
a couple of video works, some of which she exhibited as parts of gallery 
installations. She has shown her work on a few film festivals but she 
mainly works as a visual artist and lives between Zagreb and Berlin. 
More on http://www.nikaradic.com/

Davor Sanvincenti / b.1979 / is an international multimedia artist from 
Croatia, also known by monikers such as Messmatik and Gurtjo Ningmor. He 
is specifically interested in a field of audiovisual research and 
anthropology of visual culture, particularly focused on the conditions 
and forms of human senses and perceptions. Notices, observations and 
research that pervade scientific and artistic spheres constitute the 
structure for his work. His artistic practice takes shape in the variety 
of media - film and video, photography, physical light and sound 
installations and live media performances. More on http://www.messmatik.net/


Curators: Sanja Horvatinčić, Nina Pisk, Klaudio Štefančić


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